MLS web traffic way up

The arrival of Beckham has not caused MLS's television ratings to soar but it has had a very big effect on their web traffic. Numbers released today show that total worldwide unique visitors to MLS's official website has gone from 478,000 in July 2006 to 1,037,000 in July 2007. As far as the visitors from the US, that number has also grown from 378,000 last July to 594,000 this year.

These numbers do not include visits from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

While the numbers themselves might not be huge, it does show yet another way that the Beckham deal and all the media that went along with it has helped pull people into the league, even if it is only for a short web visit.

Here are the figures:

Date	World Unique Vistors	US Unique Visitors
July 2006	478,000	378,000
Aug 2006	522,000	418,000
Sept 2006	250,000	222,000
Oct 2006	294,000	274,000
Nov 2006	306,000	201,000
Dec 2006	230,000	159,000
Jan 2007	808,000	404,000
Feb 2007	345,000	206,000
Mar 2007	392,000	252,000
Apr 2007	567,000	369,000
May 2007	521,000	281,000
June 2007	719,000	350,000
July 2007	1,037,000	594,000

It is interesting how much the world numbers have jumped. It use to be that the US made up 80% or more of the MLS traffic, but now it is less then half. I don't know what all it means but it will be interesting to see if the league can keep them and go the increased traffic into something.